Sam Worthington Tests The Waters In Trailer For Surf Drama Drift

Surfboards. Beer. Babes. Drift seems to have all of the ingredients of a bitchin’ surf lark, with Sam Worthington and his Aussie buds opening a surf shack as a means of putting life on hold for a few more years. Those tasty waves don’t last forever, after all.

But the latest trailer for Morgan O’Neill and Ben Nott’s sport-drama suggests a darker turn that suddenly has us pretty excited for the Australian export. Twitch just posted it. Check it out below:

The one-liners in the clip are a little groan-worthy, and the titled cards (“They didn’t wait for the perfect wave … the built it from scratch!”) wouln’t be out of place in a Gerard Butler-Katherine Heigl rom-com commercial. But there’s something about surf photography that has always looked amazing on the big screen, and the surfing scene in O’Neill and Nott’s flick look bodacious.

Worthington’s name will be on the poster, as he’s the lone “marketable” talent in the ensemble. But it looks like he’s third-banana to the scrappy surfing brothers played by Xavier Samuel and Myles Pollard. Their combustible chemistry likely will be the foundation on which Drift builds, and if we’re going to buy into the story being told here, they are going to have to give us characters to root for. Hopscotch plans to release Drift in Australia in 2013, with a probable rollout to the States in the early part of the year. With the trailer, there comes an official synopsis. Tell us, are you interested in Drift?

Australia, 1970s. The Kelly brothers, Andy and Jimmy, have one great passion: riding big waves. As kids, their mother escaped from Sydney to Margaret River, a sleepy coastal town with some of the world's most challenging and dangerous waves. For the next 12 years, the boys perfected their surfing skills, always searching for the perfect ride.
Free-spirited Jimmy is a gifted surfer and innovator but he starts to slip toward a life of crime to help the family out of debt. Andy makes a big decision. Quitting a stable job, he bets on Jimmy's surf inventions and his own business skills and launches a backyard surf gear business. They rethink board design, craft homemade wetsuits and sell their merchandise out of their van.
Encouraged by their new friends, travelling bohemian surf photographer and filmmaker JB (Sam Worthington) and his gorgeous Hawaiian surfer companion, Lani, who stirs the two brothers' hearts, they start to seek ways to expand. After they get mixed up with a local drug dealer, it looks like everything they built up, will be ruined...
Set in breathtaking locations and inspired by the true story of Australia's legendary surfwear moguls, the film chronicles the rise of surf brands and the expansion of the laidback surf attitude as a global lifestyle. A story of passion and corruption, friendship and loyalty, deadly addictions and fractured relationships, DRIFT tells a tale of courage and the will to survive against all odds.”